Book Review — The Case for Palestine: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care

This latest book of Dan Kovalik is an outstanding book on many different counts and is highly recommended as reading for anyone who wishes to get a grounded understanding of the genocide still happening in Gaza and now extending to Lebanon, the West Bank and beyond. Although Dan did not succeed in getting to Gaza to witness the genocide first hand, he was able to visit the West Bank in the aftermath of October 7 and thus provide the next best thing namely the testimony of Palestinians closely connected with the massacre. In the book, it is evident that he has many Palestinian friends, well acquainted with the atrocities in Gaza through family members still in Gaza. Thus it is the nearest thing to direct experiences of the total destruction taking place.

As well as giving a vivid account of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Kovalik provides a valuable historical context. The background to the present “nakba” [catastrophe] as it were, is the imperial interests dating back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 when Arthur James Balfour, then Foreign Secretary of the UK, sent a proposal to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leading proponent of the Zionist movement in Britain. While the Zionists were interested in a homeland for the persecuted Jews of Europe, Balfour as Kovalik points out was rather more interested in a colonial bulwark to control the Suez Canal in perpetuity together with control of the entire Middle East and its oil deposits. President Wilson and the US had a similar interest in the establishment of the future colony and at that time supported the then leader of Western imperialism, Great Britain. Coming to the imperial context of the present genocide being perpetrated against the Gazans, Kovalik outlines elements seldom if ever revealed or mentioned in the media in the West. Those elements include the completion of the Ben Gurion Canal from Gaza to the Jordan River and the development of the enormous gas and oil reserves discovered off the coast of Gaza in the Levant Basin.

Kovalik also provides a valuable overview and context to the founding of Israel as a colonial settler formation and its affinity to the establishment of the US as a similar colonial enterprise many centuries previous and hence the affinity between Israel and the US. The elimination/extermination of the native populations provides a kind of nexus and commonality between the two. As Kovalik states “the United States like Israel was built on settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing and genocide against the indigenous population” (p. 177). The difference between the two lies in that the US was founded at a time when little was known in the rest of the world about its exploits whereas the genocide context of the Israeli enterprise is before the eyes of the world. No matter how much the mainstream media of the West tries to cover over unbearable savagery of the events, the truth ekes out through social media, Al Jazeera news channel in Doha and Dan Kovalik’s book.

The US did not always support and defend Israel in the unconditional way it is doing now. Back in 1956, Britain, France and Israel suddenly attacked Egypt after Gamal Abdul Nasser had taken over over the Suez Canal. The US opposed the move by its allies against Nasser and they had to withdraw in ignominious defeat. As Kovalik explains it, US opposition  to the attack on Nasser  was not because the US was anti-imperialist but served to emphasise that the US was now the imperial top dog in the world and demanded to be recognized as such. Eleven years later, however, when Israel demolished the entire military of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, the US was totally supportive. Furthermore, as Kovalik maintains, quoting Rashid Khalidi “the Six-Day War that took place in 1967 and its aftermath marked the change in US-Israeli relations that would remain constant for the next fifty years plus” (p. 32). All this despite Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

Fast forward to the present, this US-Israeli bond despite all of Israel’s atrocities and crimes especially against the Palestinian people seems to have become unshakeable. Kovalik quotes one of his close Palestinian friends, Fadia Barghouti, as saying “We are not fighting Israel, we are fighting the United States”. Despite all the atrocities committed day after day, the US continues to pour weapons of the most lethal kind into Israel and every censure of the Israeli government and army by the UN is met with a veto from the US.

Although the main thrust of Kovalik’s book is an unvarnished description of the present genocide in Gaza continuing as I write, he does speculate on possible resolutions of the conflict. For one thing he dismisses all talk about a possible two-state solutions. It is clear that the government of Israel does not believe in such a scenario and every action it  takes reinforces this. The settler colonies that have been established in the West Bank seem to have put several nails in the coffin of a two-state solution. In addition, the violence unleashed by the settlers on Palestinians and their lands and orchards has made life in the West Bank a nightmare.

So Kovalik comes down on the only solution going forward is a one-state solution in which there are equal rights and duties for all Palestinians and Jews, somewhat on the model of present day South Africa. At the moment, however, every action of Israel and all the forces within Israel seem determined to try to make any solution, one democratic state or two states, impossible. While paying lip service to the two-state solution, their every action says the opposite. The US as its enabler plays along with the fiction of the two-state solution while clearly knowing that it is a fraud

As one looks forward, the prospects for a solution such as Kovalik sees it are dim at this moment. As long as the US remains adamant in being Israel’s enabler in genocide not much progress can be made. However, there are developments that can bring about the desired outcome. For one thing, the formation and growth of the BRICS coalition of former colonial nations with Russia as a counter weight to US unipolar hegemony can radically change the equation. The growth of the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement around the world is a powerful growing force to do what happened in South Africa in the 1980s. In addition, the use of accusations of anti-semitism as a club and bogeyman to silence voices against the genocide is losing its power. More and more people see the phony nature of such allegations.  Condemning the genocide of the government of Israel can only be construed as anti-Semitic by defying logic and reality

In summary, Dan Kovalik’s book is a tour de force in understanding the origins of the disastrous genocide still in progress in Gaza and is essential reading for all who are working to bring it to an end. The book shows a wide knowledge of the history, politics, and economy of Israel and the world.